Interesting that Enzo finished on top. Goes to show ya, enduros aren't about outright speed or the "works".

Glad to see you guys did so ******* amazing. Whats next?

 

We have been talking about it for a while actually. Sort of depended on how we did at this years T25. Maybe two E1 cars or one each E1, E2 and E3. Rear drive, front engine, lightweight. Probably an NB but we're considering other options. Takes over a year to fully develop a car and learn how to race it so we're already behind the 8 ball if we switch to another platform.

There are some other long races or multi-day events we would like to do.

 

Sleep, she is for the weak.

 

You know if you are looking to get into other types of racing, we always have a spot for you driving a well developing, semi-totaled, but still somewhat drivable, lemons NA. Imagine how much practice you could get for Thunderhill next year will all the repairs you have to do at Lemons. I would need a driving resume though to make sure you were up to the task. Ha

I was having the same thought of where do you go from here? Prepping a different car for grand-am GT? I am trying to find the next logical step, but it seems it gets very expensive and different after the NASA type enduros.

 

Congrats to a great finish. Well done for sure. Can only imagine the logistics involved. I also have to smile a little at the reference to the pro teams. If this is not a pro team, what is? I guess everyone getting paid to race and crew..

Curious to the expense/costs of fielding this 2 car team. Entry fees, fuel (which has to be purchased at the track), 6 set of tires (per team?), etc. etc..There was a pretty good sponsor list though. Were there any contengencies won?

Great job again. Regarding fielding a fwd car for next year, I present this excerpt from NASA's site:

"Four of the five classes that took the checker were won by a Mazda Miata or MX-5. Ten of the possible 18 podium positions were held by Mazda Miata or MX-5 competitors."

Our toys are pretty cool..

 

Damage was limited to the bumper only. A very slight bend in the rad support was also noticed after the race, but nothing that effected the car's performance or tire wear. the lights were not on the car at the time, and the hood still opened and closed fine. All the tape that you see in later pics was simply a precaution since we were concerned about too much stress on the hood once the lights were on and we didn't want that coupled with all the extra air hitting that to be an issue.

The biggest troubles came around 2-3am when things started to break. I think that in that hour period we did about 15 hours of billable labor. The brake issue was NOT an issue with either the pads, rotors, or calipers. We had been running ABS with two drivers in a row that used the brakes to their full potential. This coupled with the ABS caused the brakes to run really hot making the 75% pad that had been remaining after 8+ hours disappear down to less than nothing in about 90 minutes. But don't think that brakes were the only issue. It seemed that other than a hub here and there, most of the issues were things that could have potentially been preventable, and not issues with parts not being good enough.

That said, everyone driver and crew did an outstanding job, and finishing where we did was amazing, fun, lots of hard work, and made the entire experience very worthwhile.

 

The true "pro" team was the one a pit stall away that was essentially the Flying lizard ALMS team that finished a full 48 laps ahead of anyone else... But yes, there was a ton of professionalism in our team, and was put together and run very well.

A FWD car would be terrible at this race. you would be going through front tires every fuel-up. I think that the weight, balance, and fuel efficiency of the Miata makes it the perfect car for something like this.

 

I think the cars used four full sets of tires each plus another that saw some time in practice. 10 gallons of fuel per stop, and we made fuel stops every 80-90 minutes. Again, that's per car. You do the math on fuel costs, but each car did something like 1900 track miles not including practice.

The logistics were something else. We had spares out the wazoo. Food kept on showing up. There were electric blankets! Dean arranged for us to have a garage, which was really nice to have during setup and testing and thankfully not required during the race. There were three RVs for sleeping, an entire table devoted to radios and chargers, spares for just about everything including complete front and rear subframe assemblies. While the race itself is hard work, there's a huge amount goes into just getting to the start line properly prepared.

We might not have been a pro team from the standpoint of paychecks. But that was the only difference in my mind. The cars were prepped as well as they could be, they were supported to the best possible ability and the driver lineup was very deep in talent. Sonny spent something like 9 hours up in the crows nest simply talking to the drivers about what was going on around them.

 

^ Very well put. Also, a 1-2 was in the cards if only crusher could have gone another lap on fuel. Somehow a 103 minute stint left the fuel tank slightly empty.

It was a blast working with you Keith, I hope to see everyone from the team again at some point. I still think that you and 949 should team up and run an LS1/2 in either E0 or E1 next year. Fueling would be an issue, and it would probably need bigger brakes, larger or at least stronger hubs to handle the extra speed/grip/power/heat, but I think that it would be an absolute blast. And short shifting at say 4k rpm should make the car both fast and very reliable.

Just saying, a 2-3 car team with a legitimate top 5 contender would be awesome.

 

Now that would be interesting. Everything would get stressed a lot harder, but it sure would be a fun car. I don't know how the classification would work, but it's possible we'd be able to use a high-speed fuel rig if the cross-manufacturer engine swap forced us into ES. I imagine our fuel use would be similar to that of the Cobras. Definitely better hubs!

We did have a surprising amount of fun, that's for sure.

 

^ Ya, if we ended up classing into ES we could use a 44 gallon tank and whatever type of fueling rig we wanted. The problem then would be trying to figure out how to keep up with the Mercer boys. And at that competition level, the Miata chassis would just be too short, too narrow, and not fast enough to run their pace. I think that some sort of C6 would make a good E1/ES competitor. Solving the oil starve issues, and cooling the transaxle are the two biggest issues with vette reliability, and both could easily be fixed, so I would speculate that a C6 could do well.

 

just an idea of how hectic it is..

 

Someone has to have a pic of the power strips... I think that we had 5 or 6 all linked together, and every plug was used...

 

some of my favorite pictures....

 

you think this meet the electrical code ? 5 power strips daisy chained

 

love it! I want in lol.

 

You can't see it in the pics, but I think it was Keith? (maybe someone else) and I were joking/laughing about how everything under where the rear bumper should have been was seam-welded. Tail light housing, bumper support, ect. We just though that it was interesting how well and thorough the seam weld job was, that and how terrible it would have been to have had tail light housings that flexed...

 

I've run my LS1 miata in a couple of shorter enduros so I have a little experience. If the enduro rules stay the same, we could build a car to the limit of ST2 (maps to E0) that would be, in a word, awesome. The problem would be front hubs. With the brain trust we have, we could make the car get good gas mileage and be easy on brakes. We couldn't come remotely close to beating the likes of Mercer, but we could demolish all the other E0, E1, E2 and E3 competitors. Oh wait, we already did that with a 4-banger...

Dean

 

It's amazing to see how much you need on the logistics side to make this happen.

What brand of bearings were you guys running witch which lube?

 

Hustler: We had different types of hubs. Emilio swears by Amsoil. I love Redline. I used junkyard hubs and rebuilt them. I believe I only had one hub failure, but that was my mistake for using a really old hub.